600 Teachers Apply to Learn How to Shoot a Gun at School

Submitted by IWB, on January 8th, 2013

As of this Wednesday, over 600 teachers from 15 states have applied for a free firearms training program that a gun advocacy group, the Buckeye Firearms Association, announced it would sponsor in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. The three-day training will train teachers how to wield firearms in the case of a school shooting.

According to a press release, the association hopes to use the training as a starting point for a more refined, ongoing “Armed Teacher” curriculum. The first training will take place this spring at an Ohio training facility. Buckeye Firearms’ chairman Jim Irvine explained program details to StateImpact:

It has to be conducted in an outside range, a dynamic range as they’re called, because it’s just something you can’t do shooting down lanes at a firing range, so weather is a factor in Ohio and the class is not completely designed yet.

In a traditional shooting range you’re in a shooting lane, but classrooms aren’t conducted in lanes. The threat can come from anywhere; the threat can come from multiple directions. You have to analyze the threat in a 3D environment. We want to train for the real event.

We have to change the mindset in schools and get some good people in schools that are the first line of defense. This isn’t a new idea it’s just that the events in Connecticut make what we’ve been talking about for years all of a sudden politically acceptable. Now everything is on the table, this is something that can and will be done.